A while back, Sparth posted some work on Conceptart.org. In his post he stated, "a while ago, i got very inspired after having watched thom tenery's process and the way he managed to stock his ref sources in a very smart way."

I asked if he could break down this method, but sadly never got a response
I realize sparth and Thom are probably very busy, so I thought I'd ask here

My Reference files are virtually useless to me as they are so disorganized and spread out all over the place. If Sparth or Thom can elaborate, that would be SWEET! OR If anyone else saw this tutorial, could they explain it to me? I'm in the process of trying to reorganize my files and I'm quite frustrated.

BTW, I am asking this here, so that everyone may benefit from an explanation. WHeeeeeee

aye, I know what you mean when you say "disorganized and all over the place". It seems very simple to organize references but yet I don't.... Maybe I need that elaboration as well like octavian needs. Where is this tutorial located octavian?_________________an.over.dose.of.oxygen

Wiredgear: Well, yes it does seem simple to organize... and yes, it relatively is. However, there is quite an art to organization, and it all depends on HOW you categorize your refs. I'm not suggesting that Thom is the Charles Darwin of reference categorization, but hey... who knows?

I'm assuming it was a tutorial since Sparth "watched" him work... perhaps they work together, I'm not sure. either way, I'm very curious as to his approach to using references "in a very smart way"

I've tried numerous ways of categorizing my refs.... from strict categories like "bodyparts/limbs/hands" type thing, to broader generalizations like "light and color refs" and "texture patterns" etc. But lately I've been thinking more about how to USE my references to good effect. I mean on one hand, there are references that you use for knowledge, such as anatomy refs, or refs you don't own, and there are references that you use in your work, such as texture, or references that you might OWN... or in the case of hydropix, layering different photos on top of a painting to get light patterns etc... and not necessarily for the actual contextual information of the image. (I saw this in a tutorial by him, not suggesting that is how he works exclusively.)

Here's to hoping I can get answers for everyone. at the very least, we can probably start a good conversation?

SO here is what I have to offer:
References can be broken down into two broad categories:

1: Knowledge Reference (anatomy, animals, light and color, textures, compositional, etc.) i.e. things you use to gain understanding for your work; that can be either owned by you, or taken from multiple sources such as the internet, books, magazine clippings... etc.

2: Working Reference (textures, light information, even photos for matte style painting) these should be copyright free, and or owned by you. There are many creative ways to use these types of images in creating art.

Now I have ideas for how to categorize things within these two broad groups, and I'll admit, they are pretty straight forward, but first I'd like to get ideas on how other people organize their stuff... so that we might learn something.

Hey fellas, Sparth was referring to the Diverge workshop in Dallas, where David Levy, Thom, and I all gave painting demos.

All Sparth is talking about was how Thom made one big image with all his lights from previous paintings, etc collaged together, so he could then make random selections and paste into a new painting, was very efficient and smart.